Tech giant Amazon is laying off hundreds of employees at its headquarters in Seattle, Washington.
The majority of the layoffs are taking place across the company’s core retail business, which still makes up the majority of the company’s sales but is not growing as fast as it once was.
While they make up a small fraction of the company’s 500,000-plus employee base across its corporate offices and warehouses, the cuts mark a rare pullback for the e-commerce giant as it reaches into new industries like media, grocery retail, and logistics.
And they come while the company looks to expand on its lead in new businesses like Alexa.
Hundreds of layoffs are modest for a company that is now the second-largest U.S.-based corporate employer and pales in comparison to adjustments.
The cuts come after a hiring binge that took the company’s Seattle headcount to more than 40,000 people, from just 5,000 in 2010.
According to several employees, the rapid growth of the last two years left some units over budget and some teams with too much staff for their work. Amazon had implemented hiring freezes in recent months across several groups, a move that reduced the company’s open job listings in Seattle to their lowest level in years.
An Amazon spokesman told Fortune that “as part of our annual planning process, we are making headcount adjustments across the company—small reductions in a couple of places and aggressive hiring in many others.”